Debate Curriculum

We place a premium on producing replicable results in the classroom, and the lessons we’ve learnt from years of coaching successful school debate teams have been distilled into an easy to learn syllabus for anyone. Our initial 12-week program effectively drill the fundamentals of argumentation, rebuttal, and powerful oratory skills through comprehensive lectures and a variety of entertaining exercises. Coupled with specific lessons on case preparation skills and debate strategy, we are able to guarantee that anyone can become a competent, if not impressive debater and public speaker.

The curriculum also draws on the best practices in other sports, incorporating the use of technology and sports psychology to construct the optimal training environment. Video analysis, audio pattern breakdowns, coaching on body language and demeanour, and conditioning techniques for anxiety or confidence issues are some of the exclusive methods we employ during the sessions.

Learning at The Rhetoric Collective will never be limited to repeating a set of exercises. We will empower students to precisely identify problems and to have the resilience to work through those flaws, even outside our classes.

Training dozens of debaters from scratch and getting them competition ready within a limited time frame have served as the ultimate test environment to evaluate our methods. We’ve worked with teachers from the Ministry of Education to construct training plans, chart students’ progress, set realistic developmental goals, and squeeze as much performance out of each debater. Those same pedagogical principles are applied within the syllabus structure. Before any student begins classes with us, we insist on an initial session where they will be individually assessed to understand their needs and to chart their potential development path. Bookings for the first session are available here.

Flexibility is key in the construction of the curriculum. Too often, standardised syllabi become a straitjacket, limiting the growth of each and every student in a class. The drills and exercises we use in training sessions can be easily adapted and scaled to suit different learning styles and abilities. Even though every new student will start off with the first 12-week course, there will be opportunities for progression with intermediate and advanced modules, in conjunction with in-depth masterclasses on niche topics. In addition, we place a strong emphasis on perpetual refinement and improvement of our pedagogy. We are not content with a single magical formula that works, nor do we believe it exists. An education model that is static, will eventually become stagnant and ineffective. That is also why we remain continually involved with international competitions as debaters and adjudicators - to keep track on the pulse of the sport. The curriculum will always be revised with the latest developments in the debate circuit, so that any student will be able to pursue a competitive career and not be left behind.